What to read after Beyond the Boomerang?

""Beyond the Boomerang" provides a substantial update and revision to one of the most prominent theories in transnational advocacy, Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink's boomerang theory. Their 1998 book, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics (Cornell University Press), remains one of the first broadly applicable theories for why groups of NGOs and interested individuals formed transnational advocacy networks. Keck and Sikkink argued that these networks formed when local NGOs (typically from the global South) faced local blockages, usually in the form of intransigent government officials, and reached out to international NGOs (typically from the global North) to rally international pressure on behalf of the local actors. Their book has been cited more than 12,000 times and is a standard text for graduate students around the world. Since publication, the empirical conditions that prompted their theory have changed. The types of actors involved in transnational advocacy have diversified. Northern NGOs have lost power and influence and been restricted in their access to southern states. Southern NGOs have developed a capacity to undertake advocacy on their own and often built closer relationships with their own governments. International institutions have become more open to southern NGOs and more skeptical of southern NGOs' claims to speak for southern populations. The result is that the boomerang theory, although still useful, no longer provides the broad explanation for advocacy. A wealth of recent articles (many by contributors to this volume) showed a growing scholarly recognition of the need for new theory. "Beyond the Boomerang" offers cutting-edge scholarship and synthesizes a new theoretical framework to develop a coherent, integrated picture of the current dynamics in global advocacy. "Beyond the Boomerang" editors Christopher Pallas and Elizabeth Bloodgood propose a new theory called transcalar advocacy. Contributors to this volume were asked to answer these questions: How does transcalar advocacy differ from older conceptions of transnational advocacy? Where and when does transcalar advocacy occur? Who initiates and participates in transcalar advocacy? When are alliances and partnerships created, if at all? How generalizable is the theory we are developing? The answers relayed in the chapters show that developments in two particular areas are reshaping the nature and impacts of transcalar advocacy. First, the global structures in which NGOs operate are shifting, in terms of the nature of power, who holds power, and the geographic locations where policies are made. This in turn suggests important shifts in where advocacy should be targeted. Second, the agency of NGOs is also changing. Advocates have a larger diversity of possible partners, strategies, and campaigns open to them, which produces a more widely variable set of behaviors and policy outcomes. The introduction discusses how historical theories of transnational advocacy have derived from specific empirical observations. The volume editors demonstrate how changing empirical conditions and new advocacy phenomena are not all well explained by historical approaches to transnational advocacy and thus require the development of new theory. Chapters in Part I look at changes in the architecture of global governance (which alter the playing field for advocates), and chapters in Part II examine changes in the agency of advocates (which alter the roles and capacities of the players). A volume conclusion provides a new theory to integrate and model these trends. To demonstrate the applicability and relevance of its core theoretical insights, the case studies are global in scope, with data from Latin America, Africa, Europe, and Asia, and with several chapters featuring cross-national comparison. The chapters highlight the wide variety of actors involved in advocacy work, including NGOs, social movements, international institutions, governments, and businesses. Contributors use both qualitative and quantitative methodologies and bring to bear insights from political science, international relations, and sociology. The case studies also include a wide variety of issue areas, from women's rights to environmental protection, sustainable agriculture, health policy, and democracy promotion"--